ACHILLES IN VIETNAM

[Dover]

ACHILLES IN VIETNAM : Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (Paperback)

Amazon.com
Shay works from an intriguing premise: that the study of the great Homeric epic of war, The Iliad, can illuminate our understanding of Vietnam, and vice versa. Along the way, he compares the battlefield experiences of men like Agamemnon and Patroclus with those of frontline grunts, analyzes the berserker rage that overcame Achilles and so many American soldiers alike, and considers the ways in which societies ancient and modern have accounted for and dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder---a malady only recently recognized in the medical literature, but well attested in Homer's pages. The novelist Tim O'Brien, who has written so affectingly about his experiences in combat, calls Shay's book "one of the most original and most important scholarly works to have emerged from the Vietnam war." He's right.

Product Description
In this strikingly original and groundbreaking book, Dr. Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer's Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the Iliad was written twenty-seven centuries ago it has much to teach about combat trauma, as do the more recent, compelling voices and experiences of Vietnam vets.

http://www.amazon.com/ACHILLES-VIETNAM-Combat-Undoing-Character/dp/0684813211/ref=pd_rhf_f_3/002-6325565-2651244

[Monkeyman]

1. Thanks Dover

[Dover]

2. My pleasure, MM. ;- )

Long perspective on an ancient wound.